Chapter Text
The full moon was at its zenith, its glow barely discernible through thick clouds—their density a clear sign of the storm about to break.
I couldn’t remember what sort of moon I had last seen in Skalitz, how it had shone down on my last dance with Bianca, or whether its reflection had been visible in my last drinks with Fritz, Matthew, and Matthias. I couldn't remember if it had been at its peak, probably watching our singing around the fire with mockery, finding it naive and fleeting in the face of the coming tragedy.
I felt the ring—which was probably not worth even the crumbs of stale bread—between my fingers, taking careful steps as I followed the silvery light that traced the river. The flow seemed to be cut off further on by the bridge before the bathhouse, and to my right Rattay shone, indifferent to my misery; like a sleepy, indolent creature, its stone skin forever ignorant of what it means to bleed.
I didn’t know what sort of joke Peshek wanted to play on me with this ring, but that unease was a thousand times better to focus on than the budding pain that slumbered, stretched, expanded, and swarmed in my chest—capable of awakening, roaring, tearing, and biting at the slightest sound.
So I simply focused on the feel of the ring between my fingers and the moonlight glinting off the river, crossing the bridge at a slow pace, as if a sudden movement might be enough to awaken that beast in my chest with which I would have to learn to live… or survive.
“Thief! Thief!”
The shouts in the distance sent a chill down my spine. My heart raced for a few wild beats before I realized they weren’t talking about me.
A shadow darted past me at full speed; footsteps were approaching from Rattay as well, and my legs acted before my brain could process the information.
“Hey, you, stop!” I shouted at the man running towards the mill. In the darkness, I could make out his attempt to look over his shoulder just before he stumbled, lost his footing for two paces, and fell heavily onto the sandy ground with a sharp, painful thud.
A cloud of dust rose along with a childish grunt from the runner as I approached him. It was a boy, no more than thirteen or fourteen springs old, giving him the agility to spring back to his feet in a matter of seconds.
“Here, I didn’t want it anyway!” he spat venomously, throwing his loot onto the ground before running off once more.
“Stop right there, you criminal scum!” The voice drew closer at an alarming speed, accompanied by heavy footsteps.
“He ran that—” I tried to say, but before I could even process the fading shadow of the boy in the distance or his pursuer, knuckles struck my jaw with the force of a hammer made of flesh and bone.
The pain shot through me in an instant before total darkness swallowed me whole. By the time the moonlight reappeared in my vision, blurred and wavering, my back was already pressed against the ground. On top of me was a whoreson who, within the next minute, would have his arse on the ground—even if it was the last thing I ever did in this wretched life.
“What the—! You bastard!” The words came out accompanied by blood and an unbearable burning sensation inside my mouth. From past experience, I knew that sting could only mean my teeth had broken through the skin on impact, and it would be a right pain for several fucking days.
“Watch your mouth, peasant!” I tried to break free from his grip, but there was a calculated precision in the way this cunt spread his weight over me—a deliberateness I’d never sensed in drunks or casual brawlers looking for quick coin. “Give back what you stole from that pretty wench and maybe the bailiff won’t flay your back into ribbons.” His breath hit my face, heavy with wine—sweet and lacking that vinegary undertone that almost always accompanied cheap booze.
“I didn’t steal shit! Are you daft or just blind?! The bastard ran—” I barely managed to raise my arms to shield myself from another blow. God, what absolute shit my luck was.
“Be quiet, scoundrel! Where did your dirty paws hide it, huh?”
“I’ve got nothing! The thief tossed it, I didn’t see where the hell it landed,” I tried to reason with him—a sure waste of time, because that damned son of a bitch must have had something seriously wrong with his fucking head.
His hands began to feel around my sides, the edges of my tunic, my bloody belt. I took advantage of the brief respite to try and slip out of his grip, but his hand pressed my chest against the ground with a force some might even consider intimidating. Was he a guard or…
He didn’t look like a guard. Not in those peasant’s clothes—garb that clashed like earth and sky with the fat satchel of pristine reddish leather that almost seemed to gleam in the moonlight, hanging idly from his belt.
“And what is this, then?” said the man in a haughty, almost theatrical tone, so far removed from the rough accent of a farmer, or a butcher, or anyone who haggled at the market in the morning and spat obscenities at wenches and drunks at night.
I looked at the copper ring between his fingers. When the hell had he—
“That’s mine, give it back!” I tried to reach for it, but the hand on my chest surrounded my wrist with a most vicious grip, and the one holding the ring raised it out of my reach with infuriating ease.
“Yours? To do what? Bury it back in the dung heap where you found it? ” A laugh of that arrogant, melodious sort I’d only ever heard from the few wealthy burghers who stopped by Skalitz burst from the man.
“Piss off, cunt. That's my ring!”
The upper half of his face was hidden by a hood, yet I could still make out the annoying, shit-eating grin beneath the soft silver light.
“Well, not any more, foul-mouthed wretch” And then he threw it away, as if it were rubbish. As if I hadn’t dug a bloody grave to get it. As if I hadn’t had to stifle a scream against the palm of my hand when one of the executioner’s stupid hounds bit my ankle. As if Peshek wasn’t going to give me shit or kick me out of the bloody mill for screwing up the job.
That was it.
With my free hand, I snatched that far-too-fancy satchel and threw it as far as my shitty position would allow. A cry of surprise cut through the dark, quickly twisting into a growl of pure indignation.
“Agh, you goddamned animal!” he spat, making a clumsy attempt to scramble up and freeing my wrist, still throbbing from his savage grip.
“Oh no, you won’t!” I muttered.
Reaching blindly upward, my newly freed hand found his crotch, and I squeezed his balls with all the venom seeping from the pain in my mouth and my lost ring.
“K-kurva!”
A stifled laugh—one I didn’t even realize I was still capable of—escaped my lips as the haughty bastard collapsed sideways, groaning an almost animalistic yelp as his pride was completely crushed in an instant.
“You... you dishonorable dung grabber! A disrespectful little shit like you could only have been spawned from a donkey’s arse!”
I ignored his pained muttering as I dragged myself away, pulling my legs out from under his heavy, twisting frame.
The sky lit up for a fraction of a second, revealing his shaking shoulders and a strand of blond hair peeking out from under his hood. A clap of thunder loud enough to make the nearby dogs bark in terror followed almost immediately, rattling the very ground beneath me.
A heavy drop of rain smacked against my leg, then my hand, then my nose. A second later, thousands more followed, unleashing a waterfall of biblical proportions that threatened to pin me right back down into the mud under its fucking weight.
“Wonderful. Just bloody wonderful,” I stammered, scrambling to my feet. If the rain washed that stupid ring into the river, I might as well consider myself evicted by tomorrow morning.
I barely took two steps before fingers clamped around my ankle through the frayed fabric, yanking hard enough to completely throw me off balance.
“Fu—” I fell heavily to my knees, elbows sinking into the mire. The mud was growing thicker by the second, making it almost impossible to keep my face out of the muck.
“Oh no, you’re not going anywhere until you get my satchel back, you wanker,” he groaned, his voice still tinged with a satisfying squeal of pain. I kicked out, trying to break free from his grip, but the son of a bitch just locked his second hand around my boot to hold on.
The rain was getting heavier. Between the pitch-black night and the blinding wall of water surrounding us, it was a miracle I’d managed to spot the damn satchel in the distance at all.
“Alright, alright! Just let me go, for fuck’s sake!”
“No! You’ll just run off like a slippery rat with its tail on fire!” I could barely hear him over the roar of the downpour.
The sky flashed white, and a split second later, the heavens roared with such fury that it might well have been the harbinger of the end of the world.
We both fell quiet, trapped in a moment of mutual respect for the Almighty's clear display of power.
“I won't run!” I broke the silence, keeping my eyes locked on the prize. “I can see it. If you don’t let go of me, the rain is going to wash it into the river.” I wrenched my leg forward again, but the stubborn prick held fast.
“Fine! But if you dare run off with my bloody—”
I didn’t let him finish. Wriggling free from his slackened grip, I practically crawled through the mire. Standing was impossible in this deluge; I could only scramble on all fours to stop the growing rivulets of water from sweeping away what was clearly a valuable prize.
“Why in God's name do I always get myself into this sort of rotten mess?” I muttered, finally claiming the satchel.
Lord, it even felt fancy to the touch. The leather was supple, the tooling intricate. This man was either a nobleman doing a terrible job of playing at being a peasant, or just another thief. That would make three of us tonight.
“Have you got it?!” his voice called out, sounding agitated. Through the sheets of rain, I could see he had managed to push himself up, standing unsteadily in the dark.
“Yes!” I shouted to make myself heard above the noise. The river was beginning to join in the cacophony, sweeping up rocks and branches with increasing fervor. His hand appeared through the rain, either to help me or ask for his possession back, I couldn't say. Without a second thought I took it to bring myself up.
His immediate response was a gasp of indignation that was lost in the rain; before letting go of my hand with a gesture I could only describe as disgust, I could make out in the shadows how he was wiping my filth off his even dirtier tunic.
What an insufferable bastard I’d had the ill fate to run into. Ma used to say there were all sorts of flowers in God’s garden, but this piece of shit could only be a nettle at best.
“How dare you grab my—my hand with your filthy claws, you—”
Finally on my feet, I pressed the stupidly elegant satchel against his chest, earning myself another noble sound of rage. This pretentious cunt couldn’t be a peasant even in a bard’s wildest fever dream.
“Choke on it for all I ca—!”
This time, the interval between the sky lighting up and the roar of God walking upon the earth was instantaneous.
Every hair on my body stood on end in horror, my heart leapt into my throat and my eyes nearly popped out of my head as I watched a tree on the other side of the river burst into white sparkles like the sky itself, crumbling under the weight of a blinding light with the crackling of wood flying through the air as if it were no different from grains of sand, like stones flying under the relentless strike of a pickaxe.
The man beside me said something, but I could barely hear him; in fact, even the sound of the rain had almost completely died away behind an unbearable never ending screech.
I saw his lips move now in front of me, before I saw him break into a run. With my brain still stuck on that flash of light and my heart still trying to reproduce the deafening sound of thunder with painfully strong beats, I followed him. I ran after his blurred back towards the bathhouse, where even the chickens had huddled trembling in the corner of their coop.
Every window, every crack around a doorframe, and every nook that might have let light spill from the houses was completely shrouded in gloom, as if the deluge had drowned every living soul in the settlement. Even the dogs had stopped barking, their instincts warning them not to provoke the Almighty’s wrath.
I followed him toward what looked like a stable. The ringing in my ears finally began to fade, the roar of the storm gradually returning with every laborious step that sank into the mud.
“Why the hell did you follow me?!” the man barked, his voice cutting through the dark. “If God wants to punish your thieving arse with lightning, I don’t want to be anyw—”
“Oh, shut your bloody mouth. I didn’t steal a thing!” At least, not what he was accusing me of.
In the deep shadows, I could only make out his silhouette. He snorted, his teeth chattering slightly as the cold began to seep into our bones.
“Whatever. Just… keep those sticky hands to yourself,” he muttered. Through the gloom, I could just map the shape of him pulling his tunic over his head.
“As if I wanted anything from your rotten arse other than an apology,” I grumbled, following his lead. The task was slow and exhausting; the sodden fabric clung to my skin like a heavy second layer.
“An apology?!”
His wet tunic hit the damp ground with a heavy thud.
“For the fucking punch to my jaw?!” I could still feel it, the pain, the taste of blood. Actually, I’d be feeling it for at least a fucking week.
“What?” The sheer disbelief in his voice was worthy of a good thrashing.
“I swear to God and all the saints, you must be sick in the head,” I said.
My own tunic followed, but I wrung it out hard, listening to the stream of water splash into the dirt before carefully spreading the cloth over a pile of dry hay. The idiot hadn’t even done that.
“But Ma always told me not to pick on the addlepated, so you’d better count yourself lucky. I’m a better man than whatever the fuck you are.”
“How dare that irreverent peasant mouth of yours…”
“Peasant this, peasant that! What the fuck are you, then? A nobleman?” the fucker sure acted like one. I slumped into the hay, utterly exhausted by this miserable argument.
“I—I…” He let out a frustrated grunt, sitting down no more than an arm’s length away. “If I were a nobleman, mark my words: before the cock crowed, your filthy neck would be locked in the pillory.”
“Well, lucky for me you’re not.”
He clicked his tongue and began to struggle with his boots. Wet, squelching sounds filled the dark until they hit the ground with a heavy thud, muffled by the relentless drumming of rain on the wooden roof. I followed his example, arranging mine nearby—within easy reach, just in case I had to make a run for it in the dark.
I wrapped my arms around myself, searching for warmth beneath the lull of the storm. At least the bastard beside me had discovered the virtue of silence.
Silence, however, was a terrifying foe these days.
In the darkness, my mind wandered down the most terrible paths—paths littered with corpses that had once sat beside me at Sunday Mass, at the tavern. I could feel the sharp splintered wood under my soles, the bloodied steel, and the smell of the ruins, damp with ash and entrails.
Yet that was a mercy compared to the torture that followed. Silence brought the memory of Ma’s laughter and Pa’s stern scoldings, both tainted and twisted by the gnawing memory of the terror that must have consumed them in their final seconds. I couldn’t think about Ma’s smile without remembering the fear of her last moments.
If only I could have made that terror, that despair my own—if only it meant their deaths could have been something other than senseless misery.
If only I hadn’t been such a bloody cowa—
“Are you from Skalitz?” The voice came out of the dark. He lacked that hint of pity which I didn’t know if I’d ever get used to. “One of those refugees?” It was more like a sort of childish curiosity. It almost reminded me of that time when, in my naive innocence, I asked Kunesh if his wife had left him because he always smelled funny—like horse hooves when they're pared before shoeing.
It wasn’t malicious; however, that didn’t make it any less annoying.
“So what if I am?” I spat the words at him with a venom that was almost palpable, for lack of a real enemy in sight.
I was starting to realise that that damned beast in my chest—ever-present and louder than ever when there was no sound at all—was unbearable at times like these, when the untroubled soul of someone who had clearly never been the victim of a tragedy that would never make any sense, stood before me almost mockingly— aware that mine would never be able to taste such peace again.
“So you weren’t the thief, then?” He carried on, completely oblivious to my discomfort. Or perhaps simply ignoring it.
I let out a sigh laden with all the misery of the evening, from the dog’s bite to the sensation of my balls shrinking deep inside my body from the cold seeping through my damp braies.
“No deaf, I see. Just bloody stupid.” The roar of thunder, which lit up the sky for a second, drowned out the last words.
Silence fell upon us once more. The rain continued its relentless downpour, and every now and then everything was bathed in white light, granting us a fleeting moment of sight before plunging us back into utter darkness.
Screams began to creep beneath my skin once more, the crackling of fire, the clang of swords…
“So I take it you’re in need of groschen,” but his voice drove them away once more.
“Who isn’t? Don’t you pay attention to the old wives at the market?” he probably hadn’t “They’re always saying we’re living in the end times every time the price of a head of cabbage goes up.”
“Why in God’s name would I care what some old hags say at the—” he stopped short, remembering what he was supposed to be. “Yes… dark times indeed,” he corrected himself, feigning some sort of exaggerated peasant accent.
I couldn’t help the snort of amusement that crossed my lips despite the irritation this character caused me. The presence of someone so unscathed before me was mortifying in a way I’d never experienced before; yet there was something refreshing about that very quality, a lightness I could never find again in Theresa, nor in anyone close to my tragedy.
But it was hard to focus on that feeling when that bastard had chucked my ring—my only hope of a stable roof over my head in the whole of bloody Bohemia—who knows where, as if it were nothing more than scrap metal.
Well, it was almost scrap metal, I was actually pretty sure I could pay a blacksmith to make an identical ring from an old horseshoe or something. Hell, I could even do it myself if I had access to a forge. But for that, I needed coin—coin I didn’t have to begin with.
“Why do you ask?” I ventured, recalling the weight of that satchel in my hand.
“Well… it turns out my plans for this evening didn’t exactly involve chasing wretched thieves or watching the Almighty's wrath unfold a few paces from my arse.” he said, reverting to some of his elegant manner of speech. If a foul-mouthed peacock could speak, it would surely sound just like him.
“Could’ve fooled me,” I answered dryly.
He cleared his throat, determined to continue the conversation down whatever treacherous path that man had decided to take, ignoring my words.
“You see. I found myself in need of hiring a man’s services to…” his voice grew weaker as the words came out, doubt seeping quite tellingly into his noble tone.
“I’m not going to kill or steal. I’m not that desperate.” I was desperate enough to steal, but he didn’t need to know that. My pride wouldn’t allow it.
He gasped in offense, and in the brief moment the sky lit up, I could see his hand rise to his bare, sculpted chest in some kind of flourish of indignation, a gesture I had not seen any peasant make in my entire life.
His muscles were different from those I’d seen on most men in Skalitz; they were more like Janek’s or Jaroslav’s, yet there was a certain refinement to them that spoke of plenty of meat and white bread on his diet. It was obvious they weren’t the result of any manual labour.
I still couldn't see his face, though; for reasons beyond my understanding, he insisted on keeping his damp hood pulled low, casting his features into deep shadow.
“I’d never…” he began, but he cut himself off with a sharp sigh, as if defending his honor to a mud-covered stranger in a dark shithole was beneath him. “That is not the sort of service I require. I…” He hesitated again.
How terrible must his request be to make even someone as obnoxious as him stumble over his words?
”Just say it, for God’s sake. I’ll say yes or no, and that’ll be the end of it. It’s not that hard.”
The rain once again drowned us in silence. I decided to let my mind wander over the possibilities of remaking the lost ring to stop my head from stumbling over my cross again. Perhaps I should demand that this animal foot the bill, given that it would probably be nothing more than a pittance for him. It had been his fault, after all, that I could no longer go to the mill— unless I wanted to wake up with the figure of that bloody miller lurking at the edge of my bed, daggers in his eyes and the reminder of my debt on his lips. Ah, what a pain.
“I am a man well-versed in the pleasures of the flesh, yet my soul’s obsession with certain vices is as potent as it is ephemeral.”
What the fuck?
“Something like the force of an arrow that loses range and height as it looms over its prey, and simply comes to a complete halt upon striking its mark.”
Did he seriously think a peasant could ever speak like that in his whole fucking life?
“The hell are you on about?” I didn’t bother to hide the weariness in my voice, sounding exactly like the bloke he thought I was. Didn’t care. He, of course, grunted with the frustration of a hound master watching his dog piss on his boots for the thousandth time.
“I’ve had the pleasure of tasting the lips of many a wench, those in full view and those hidden away behind skirts,” he continued, and something in my head gave a little twitch and died in plain confusion, not understanding where the hell this conversation was going.
“Whu’?”
“So, just as one might wash away the cloying taste of a poppy seed kolach with the bitterness of an ale, I’ve come to the conclusion that I need to refresh my palate for women with—”
“Do you want to bugger some poor bast—?!”
Before the words could fully leave my lips, his hand clamped over my mouth.
“Shh! Jesus. If that thunder didn’t wake everyone, your blasphemous cackling certainly will. Damn it.”
Rather than waking the bath maids, I’d probably only rouse the fucker's sense of shame—which was clearly sleeping, entirely oblivious to the atrocities this bugger was seeking in the dead of night.
I shoved his hand away. The thought that I was facing one of the men they warned us so much about in church was utterly bizarre. I’d imagined something closer to a dog in heat—some desperate creep unable to tell the difference between a woman’s cunt and a man’s arsehole. Instead, I found myself facing a fancy-speaking peacock.
“I won’t let you shove your filthy pizzle up my arse, if that’s what you were suggesting!”
“Filth—?! I must inform you, stinking louse, that no one in the whole of Rattay has a cleaner pizzle than mine.”
I shook my head confused, feeling we were speaking two completely different languages. The idea that there was something fundamentally wrong with this man’s head was starting to make more and more sense.
“Do you think I care? It could be anointed by the Pope himself for all I ca—”
“And I wasn’t going to suggest anything of the sort, you ignorant cunt. I was just going to borrow your mouth!”
Oh, his sense of shame wasn’t just dormant—it was dead, probably eaten away by worms by now.
“Are you listening to yourself?!” My fists clenched in instinctive defense, ready to strike should that pompous lunatic get the brilliant idea to come within an inch of me. “I wouldn’t do it for a hundred groschen!” I spat out the first absurd sum that came to mind, watching his silhouette with mounting tension.
“And for two hundred?” he countered, ignoring my unease.
The sum hit me like a blow, forcing every muscle in my body to relax and flooding my mind with impossible possibilities.
Two hundred? Was this madman serious?
Even at Pa’s smithy, after deducting the cost of charcoal, iron, and forge supplies, such a sum was only ever reached through big jobs for Lord Radzig, or during the autumn rush when every person of Skalitz panicked to sharpen axes, replace broken tools, and restock for the winter. And even then, that was weeks of back-breaking labor—not ten minutes, or however long it took this bastard to finish his business.
With God as my witness, I could kneel in the mud and swear I wasn’t a bugger—but two hundred groschen were two hundred groschen.
I could pay Peshek, settle up with the apothecary, buy something for Theresa as a thank-you, and still have enough left to take my red scarf—the one Ma had knitted for me—to the tailor to have it mended, and…
“Well? I know it’s a big number and your little head probably can’t even count that hi—”
“Are you serious?” I bit my lip the moment the words escaped, as if that would allow me to swallow the tiny glimmer of hope that had inadvertently slipped through.
God, what would Ma or Pa think of—
I shoved the thought aside, focusing on the silhouette in the darkness. Another flash of lightning bathed us, and I could see him looking in my direction, a smile worthy of the devil crossing his lips.
“You have my word as a nob—as a gentleman.”
I ignored his rather sad attempt to carry on with his act, too absorbed in the proposal to care.
“B-but you pay up front,” I stated, keeping my voice as level as I could. I was grateful for the absolute darkness around us and the fact that I hadn’t the faintest idea who the man in front of me really was. Not even for all the groschen in the world would I have done this under any other circumstances.
“I suppose that’s only fair,” he muttered to himself, the rain making it hard to make out his words. “Though I’m not exactly sure how I’m going to count them in the dark.”
I ignored his ramblings, watching his shadow move as he searched for the satchel, the sound of coins jingling drowning out the storm raging against the roof. Unless it had been filled with nothing but stones, the size I felt when I grabbed it spoke volumes. I wasn’t an expert at estimating a sum by weight alone, the way Pa could, but there were definitely more than two hundred in there. The value of such a fine pouch alone would surely be enough to eat like a king for a whole week, or two, if sold well.
“Shit. You know what? Just take it,” he shoved the satchel against my chest, weariness in his voice. My hands flew out in the darkness to grab it, with a certain reverence for such a huge amount of money.
“All of it?” I asked, incredulous.
“Yes, but only if we add one more condition.”
Ah, of course it couldn’t be that easy. That was exactly how the Devil got you—with easy rewards and sneaky strings attached hidden in the corner of the contract.
“I’ve already told you, my arse is staying Christian,” I grumbled, feeling the satchel in my hands.
For a moment I fancied running off with my prize without fulfilling my part of the deal; something told me that my experience chasing Fritz and the rest barefoot around Skalitz under the heat of summer would take me further and faster than his noble feet would take him. However, it was one thing to steal a scrap ring that not even a beggar would want, and quite another to break my word as a man.
It was a small, pathetic scrap of dignity that I wanted to keep intact, amidst everything else that had been irreparably destroyed within me.
“And I’ve already told you I don’t want your hairy arse! Keep it as Christian as you like. ” he snapped, though the familiar hesitation crept right back into his voice.
“So what is it?”
“Well… You’ll let me suck you off in return.”
It took me a couple of seconds to process the words, trying to work out where the value in the deal lay, and failing miserably.
“But…”
“Deal?”
“Why the hell would you wa—”
“I reckon I’m paying you more than enough to keep your stupid questions to yourself,” he hissed. “Don’t you think?”
I remained silent, weighing the offer. Two things were as certain as Holy Scripture at that moment: first, that this man had been born with some unfortunate affliction that prevented him from thinking straight, whether he desired cock or cunt; and second, that I might not even be capable of fulfilling my end of the bargain. My prick hadn’t reared its head for anything other than a piss since—
“Oh, come on. It’s just a mouth. You can imagine I’m some wench, or—”
“It’s not that,” I blurted out. I couldn’t stop the slight tremor that crept into my voice at the end.
For the first time all evening, the stranger seemed to register the hesitation in my tone. He fell silent for a couple of seconds, searching for a way to tread through the sudden shift.
“Can’t you get it up?” he asked. His capacity for genuine sympathy seemed mostly fucked from what I could tell, but the sharp edge had left his voice.
“I don’t know… Since Skalitz, I…”
My heart was like a cramped hovel with only three beds: one for sadness, another for anger, and the largest, most comfortable one reserved entirely for guilt. If any other emotion, no matter how fleeting, dared to cross the threshold, that spiteful bastard guilt would kick it out on its arse before it could even take its boots off. It had only been a few days since I’d woken up in Rattay, and I still hadn’t the faintest clue how to make room for anything but my own misery. All I could do during the day was stare out the window, turning my back on those three unwelcome guests for as long as possible, until the night fell and forced me to sleep among them.
How could I explain something like that to a stranger? I didn’t even fully understand it myself.
“Oh… Well, you don’t have to come, if that’s what’s worrying you,” he said, his tone softening into something almost gentle. “And if it doesn’t get up…”
I could just barely make out the shadow of his shoulders shrugging in the dark.
“…at least I’ll know it’s not my fault. That’s enough for me.”
The words fell lightly, surprisingly easy upon my heart, loosening one tiny knot among the thousands tangled up in the pit of my stomach. What a funny feeling.
“All right. I accept.”
I saw his shadow nod in the darkness, accompanied by a small sound of approval. My fingers fiddled with the leather flaps of the satchel as my brain tried to work out the logistics of what was about to happen.
“So…” I began.
“I’ll do you first. There’s a trough at the edge of the stables. Go wash your cock there,” he said—or rather, decreed—with the most infuriating nonchalance. “I don’t even want to know the last time you saw a proper bath. And I mean a proper bath, not some grey rag dipped in water previously acquainted with half the town’s arse.”
I let out a grunt of utter annoyance, mostly because I couldn’t actually remember the last time I'd bathed either. I focused instead on the weight of the silver in my hand, seeking patience in the vivid promise of a decent meal tomorrow. Perhaps a honey-roasted chicken, or…
“Do you require an invitation, or—”
“Tsk, I’m going. Jesus.” What an unbearable cunt.
I stumbled through the pitch-black in search of that wretched trough, guided by another brief flash of light. For a fleeting second, I wondered if Almighty God would strike us dead right here for the sin we were about to commit. But inside the hovel where my misery was crammed so tightly, fear couldn't find a place to sit. I had become so intimate with Death of late that the feeling didn't seem ready to return.
Another day, another broken thing within me.
I washed what I could in the darkness. A sharp hiss escaped my teeth the moment the icy water touched my skin. I could barely even feel my stones anymore; they had retreated far away from the cold cruelty of this world.
“I know, mate,” I murmured to them sympathetically.
I retraced my steps back to his shadow, approaching with a thousand doubts weighing on my feet, and the words of the priest of Rovna weighing on some remote corner of my mind; yet the satchel on my belt weighed heavier still.
“Are you quite sure you washed properly? That was remarkably quick.”
I couldn’t help but roll my eyes in exasperation.
“I did, my lord,” I joked, smiling at the little gasp that escaped his lips at my words.
“Ha! If I were a lord, I wouldn’t be rolling about in the hay like a boar in heat with a mere yokel,” he said hastily. For a moment, the sheer absurdity of the situation flooded my chest, causing a laugh—albeit a nervous one—to escape my lips, free and sincere. My throat ached, unaccustomed to a sound it hadn’t produced properly in weeks.
“How do you want me to…”
“On your knees in front of me,” he commanded again effortlessly. “You know, like with a wench,” he remarked without further ado, as if sodomising the willing mouths of wenches were as mundane as receiving one’s Holy Communion every Sunday.
I decided not to comment on the matter, kneeling in the hay and pulling my braies down just enough to grant him access. I felt his hands searching for me in the dark, finding the fabric of my hose.
“Pull them down! I want to feel skin, not dirty, wet rags.”
I felt my cheeks heat up at this man's boldness. I'd only ever been with Bianca, but our encounters—though limited to hurried touches and clumsy kisses in the dark—were less about words and more about feeling our way through the right sounds and the right tension on her back, the tips of her toes, or her grip against my skin.
“Right,” I murmured, obeying his command, and untied my hose. The layers of fabric fell heavily to my knees; the chill in the air wasn’t as biting as that of the damp fabric.
His fingers returned to my skin. Soft yet unmistakably masculine fingertips traced circles through the hair on my legs, with the reverence of someone stroking a beast’s fur for the first time in their life.
They moved up to my hip, completely ignoring what should have been the focus of their attention, interrupting the rhythm of my breathing as my abdomen tensed instinctively at the feel of his nails tracing the curve of my pelvic bone with an almost detached, artistic curiosity. A silent gasp escaped my throat when his hand—its movements slowed by the lack of light or the novelty of the situation—caressed the thick bush just above my cock, then around it, languidly exploring the way my legs parted slightly as his fingers passed, the sensitive skin of my balls, the droplets of water still kissing my cock.
The caresses brought with them a strange peace, a sensation that travelled down from the nape of my neck to the base of my hips, and rose again to culminate in the most curious tingling inside my skull. However, my poor little friend remained tucked away in a corner, timidly contemplating the prospect of a mouth on its delicate skin, yet still reluctant, like a wounded animal.
“Stubborn little thing. Not even a twitch?” his breath brushed against my skin, and the tickling sensation forced a silly giggle from my lips; the movement of his hands stopped immediately.
“Sorry, felt funny,” I murmured, not quite sure where to put my hands. I decided to clasp them behind my back, like a child being reprimanded.
“Yeah, not exactly what I’m going for, but I suppose it’s better than nothing.”
And with a gentleness that seemed out of place given the situation, his hand closed around my cock before enveloping it completely in the warmth—almost scalding compared to the cold of the night—of his soft mouth.
An involuntary sigh escaped my lips, a primal sense of relief at feeling at least one part of my body find a safe place to spend the night. The ghostly brush of his teeth disappeared before I could identify what it was, replaced by his smooth tongue sliding around my scared prick with slow, deliberate movements, as if he were enjoying it. Perhaps the purring that emerged from time to time from his throat meant precisely that.
What a strange man, it made me almost curious.
“Isn’t it unpleasant?” My curiosity got the better of me, forcing the question from my lips. For a moment I thought he hadn’t caught my words amidst the rain, his lazy, self-indulgent pace showing no sign of faltering.
It was a pleasure without haste or pretence, like the comforting warmth of a shot of schnapps in front of the fire on a particularly heavy snowfall.
The absence of expectations brought with it a strange intimacy I didn’t recall ever experiencing with anyone; it was more like the innocent indulgences of my young self just discovering what it meant to have hair on my balls, playing in the corner of the storeroom with the new sensations of my body.
A lewd sound of saliva and skin was my only warning before the cold once again enveloped my little friend.
A hiss escaped my lips, the saliva making the wind lash more fiercely against my prick.
“Surprisingly, it isn’t,” he replied distantly, as if answering himself rather than me. “Like this, limp, I feel like…” He paused to find the right words. “Like a baby suckling at its wet nurse’s breast?”
My face twisted in disgust at the inappropriate comparison, yet the devil, clearly amused by this display of sin, made my cock twitch in a small spasm of interest.
“I mean, I’m looking for milk too,” he joked, his voice taking on a mischievous tone with disarming naturalness. That merely elicited another spasm without my consent.
“What the fuck?” I muttered, despite the blatant contradiction of my own body—a physical shift that certainly didn't go unnoticed in the narrow space between his lips and my skin.
“Oh, don’t be a bore, you prudish lout. It’s clear your friend here has a taste for fine metaphors.” The playfulness in his voice slid over my skin, a sharp reminder of the simple pleasures the flesh used to bring before I found myself locked away in that dark hovel of a mind, left with nothing but a miserable spectrum of grief.
I stayed quiet, mostly because I hadn’t the faintest clue what the hell a "metafork" was.
Something in me wanted to let go, to focus on his words and let him guide me through the passages of that tongue of his, oblivious to the sting of smoke in a throat exhausted and sore from screaming, and the taste of ash stuck between my teeth, burial soil under my fingernails…
The heat enveloped me completely once more. Had I not been kneeling on the prickly hay, I would probably have lost my balance from the sudden sensation of suction that started at the base and raced to the tip of my growing arousal, which was fitting ever more snugly into the space of his throat, his muscles eager to devour my flesh as if it were the first bite of an autumnal feast.
“There we go,” he whispered in a voice thick and breathless with the flush of lust, before planting a chaste kiss on the tip. Before I could even think to protest, he took me back in with a low moan. The heat of his hands roamed freely now—sliding over the hair on my stomach, my thighs, my arse, pulling me forward like a rider guiding a horse. His head bobbed in a rhythmic, obscene blur.
For a moment, I felt like a mischievous child slipping through the window of that locked hovel in the dead of night. I knew perfectly well I would have to climb back inside to face my torments eventually, yet the desperate longing to feel the open world beneath my feet far outweighed the fear of whatever transgression I was committing.
A sudden flash of lightning illuminated the barn, and in that fleeting split-second, I saw my whole cock vanishing entirely between his lips.
“Wait, I’m going to—”
For the first time all night, my hand reached out to grasp him. My instinct was to tug him back by the hair, but my fingers found only the slick, damp wool of his hood. His hand shot up to intercept me; that surprisingly powerful grip clamped around my wrist, shattering my last remaining bastion of control.
“Sakra!” My spine arched violently from the nape of my neck to my holy bone. My entire body clenched around a blinding white flash of absolute nothing and total everything. It spilled behind my eyelids, my mouth, my belly—a vast, warm lake of white water, and I let myself sink into its depths, dragging the accumulated weight of weeks of suffering down with me.
“Shit. A bathhouse wench once told me that the saddest lads cum the hardest,” he gasped out, his words broken by a breathless laugh. “She was right. Jesus, I nearly choked.”
His voice sounded incredibly distant as my mind continued to float through those milky waters, barely even registering the playful slap he landed on my backside. “That would be quite the way to go, eh?”
“Aye…”
Still floating in that fleeting fragment of divine euphoria, a laugh escaped my own throat to join his. It was a nostalgic sound, and I knew it would vanish soon. But for now, I chose to linger a little longer in the quiet world outside the hovel his tongue had built for me.
Pa taught me never to leave a job half done, after all.
I fell onto my arse, still feeling the tingling sensation of my release at the nape of my neck and behind my eyelids.
“My turn,” said his haughty voice, clearly excited by what was to come; I could hear him more than see him moving in the darkness.
I assumed it would take him a while to go to the trough to clean himself, just as I had done before, letting my shoulders slump heavily as I made a deliberate effort to keep my thoughts focused on the present and not—
His hand groped for me in the darkness, finding my cheek, then my ear, and finally my jaw.
His knees positioned themselves between my parted legs and before I could say anything, a velvety warmth brushed my lips.
“What the f—”
“Just two things before we sta—”
“Aren’t you going to wash it?” I asked, pulling away despite the protest of his hand on my jaw.
“I told you, you stinking louse, no one has a cleaner pizzle than mine. My arse is no stranger to the bottom of a proper bathtub, unlike yours.”
I snorted as I felt his hand find my jaw again, running through my hair to pull me forward. And since I was human and it was only natural to breathe, I involuntarily inhaled the scent of the stranger’s intimacy. To my surprise, the first thing I noticed was a hint of lavender and… roses?
I inhaled more insistently, as if trying to find flaws in his bloody truth, managing to catch a whiff of rain and mud from his damp clothes, and that undeniably masculine musk on his skin that overshadowed all the others the closer I got to the base of his cock.
It wasn’t until his hand tugged at my hair that I realised what I was doing, sniffing him like a bloody hound.
He was completely hard now.
“Eager, are you?”
The satisfaction in his voice stirred a near-vicious urge in my gut to punch him square in the face.
“Who the hell’s cock smell like roses?” I muttered, more to myself than anyone else, still in disbelief, deciding to ignore that pedantic idiot’s utterly stupid question.
“Definitely not yours,” his words came after a soft laugh, barely distinguishable amidst the incessant sound of the rain as his fingers played with my still-damp hair.
I grunted in response, exhausted by this discussion, more concerned with the part of me wondering if I shouldn’t feel more disgusted by the situation—talking about the smell of cocks and burying my face in one as if it were a maiden’s hand and not… well, a cock.
“Anyway. As I was saying, two things before we begin…” He cleared his throat, searching once more for that haughty tone probably rooted in his very blood. “Watch your teeth. And you are not permitted to use your hands. Understood?”
The eye-roll those words elicited from me came as naturally as breathing itself.
“Oh, heavens no,” I deadpanned into the dark. “I won’t be allowed to touch this big, rose-scented cock? I think I’ll simply die of heartbreak right here, my lord.”
His laughter rang out over the drumming rain. I felt the vibration travel through the hand still tangled in my hair, coaxing an involuntary smile to my own lips. The strange ease of it all felt bizarre, as if it weren’t the first time we’d found ourselves hiding in a pitch-black stable with our braies down.
“Well, if you do a good job, perhaps I’ll let you touch it a little. Hm?” he murmured, reaching down to pinch my cheek as if I were a bloody toddler.
I yanked my face away with a snort of indignation, though the sheer levity of the gesture cracked something open in my chest—and a gut feeling told me he noticed the shift.
“Open up now, before my cock freezes off.”
My heart skipped a beat at the sudden impatience in his voice, running just beneath a faint, low current of desire. I obeyed without another word, sliding my hands down to my thighs and burying my fingers deep into the damp, crumpled wool of my hose. The silver satchel lay in the straw beside me, completely forgotten.
His fingers left my hair to find my mouth, tracing the shape of my lips before roughly pushing past them, the stretch reminding me of the broken skin inside my cheek. He ran his fingertips—now probably stained with my blood—along my teeth with a strange, cautious curiosity, mapping them out so he'd know exactly what to avoid. Then, pulling his hand away without ceremony, he replaced it with flesh that felt almost boiling against the freezing night air. The heavy head of his cock glided past my lips, settling squarely on my tongue.
A low grunt of satisfaction escaped him, echoing the exact sound I’d made when I first tasted his warmth.
“You’ve got a big mouth,” he muttered. I hadn’t the faintest clue whether I should take that as a compliment or an insult.
I tried to grunt a response, but the vibration was cut short as the tip of his cock probed the back of my tongue. It pressed right where my throat began, completely stifling my pathetic attempt at speech.
“Fuck. You don’t have a gag reflex?” There was an unmistakable note of pure glee in his voice, as if he’d just unearthed the finest treasure in the whole of Rattay. “You really don’t!” he confirmed, pushing deeper.
My breathing blocked entirely under the pressure sliding down my throat—feeling for all the world like a massive, unchewed chunk of tough meat refusing to go down to my belly. I endured it, strangely fascinated by the limits of my own body, all while wondering what the hell he was on about.
“Holy Virgin! A big mouth and no reflex,” he muttered into the dark, his voice thick with disbelief and a stifled groan. “It’s as if Almighty God sculpted you for the sole purpose of sucking co—”
I wrenched myself away, gasping greedily for air, a cold, raw sensation scratching the inside of my throat.
“You planning to kill me with that… thing?” I wheezed.
“I nearly choked on yours, so it’s only fair, isn't it?” he murmured, his hand blindly searching for my cheek again.
This time, I gave in to the touch, letting his fingers guide my head back toward him with minimal protest.
“Now take a deep breath. I want to stay deep this time,” he ordered, flashing that damn entitlement again.
“Anything else, my lord? Perhaps I should order my heart to stop beating so the throbbing doesn’t upset your noble cock?”
A low laugh, noticeably heavier and less energetic than before, escaped his chest.
“Stop it with that,” he panted, “I’m no lord.” His fingertips returned to my lips, gently parting them. “Come on. Deep breath.”
And so I did. When my lungs were full, I felt that weight enter me again with an impatience he couldn't quite hide, sinking deep inside until the hairs at its base buried my nose amongst them.
Ah, it tickled.
It stayed there for a couple of seconds; a guttural murmur that soon turned into a sigh of complete satisfaction escaped his lips, before he withdrew his hips slightly and entered again. Just enough for some air to escape from my lungs, but not enough to allow me to breathe once more.
“Jesus.” Lust mingled with genuine amazement in his voice. “Don't think— fuck — Don’t think anyone has ever taken me this well before”
He repeated the movement, feeling the muscles in my throat tense as he pushed down a little further with each thrust. Saliva had begun to form in lewd amounts, sliding shamelessly from the corners of my lips, and it wasn’t until a particularly strong breeze swept round us, cooling the dampness on my face, that I realised my cheeks were drenched in involuntary tears, driven out by his damn prick.
The wound in my mouth throbbed with every thrust. The taste of blood mingled with the salt on his flesh.
“Makes me wonder just… just how deep I can go…” His fingers moved towards my throat, as if trying to feel his cock through my skin. Something about the act made the devil himself send little twitches to my little friend once more.
I tried to catch my breath during the brief moments when he withdrew, but it was simply impossible; yet, at least at first, that took a back seat as I felt his hands burrow into my hair, massaging my scalp to the slow rhythm of his thrusts.
“You got quite the lungs there. Fuck, how are you so perfect for this?”
Couldn't he just shut the fuck up? Who the hell talked so much when buried up to the hilt in the throat of some stranger in the pitch black? Did I talk that much too? I hope not; God gave us a sense of shame for a reason.
His moans were small, guttural, controlled sounds, barely distinguishable amidst the rain but nevertheless present, and the salty taste of his skin in my mouth had dissolved completely into saliva and blood, leaving only the texture of his veins on my tongue and bitter drops of pre-cum sliding past my mouth into the depths of my stomach, prickling my throat in the process.
Every time my innards convulsed in a reflex to swallow the excess saliva, I could feel his fingers gripping my hair a little tighter, his voice rising a little higher.
I placed my hands on his hips as a warning. There was something certainly fucked up about how something as basic as my breathing could be taken away from me for the sole purpose of satisfying someone else’s lust—worse still, that of a stranger I’d never see again in my fucking life, but strangely enough, I didn’t care. My mind was on nothing but the abuse and the lack of air; it was a primal noise that silenced everything in its path that did not serve the flesh.
He finally pulled away, though only just enough to let me gasp for air around his damn cock without withdrawing it completely, as if he couldn't bear to leave the warmth of my mouth behind.
“You go—”
The sky lit up completely, blindingly white. For a fraction of a second, I thought I could see his eyes wide and staring at me from beneath the shadow of his hood. Then, the roar of the heavens crashed down. A blinding trail of lightning ripped through the darkness, striking the chicken coop—the bloody chicken coop.
I shoved him off me as a wave of debris erupted in every direction, ours included. Every sound in the world was instantly swallowed by an unbearable, screeching ring. Side by side, we scrambled across the floor, sprawling into the hay like soldiers fleeing a hail of arrows. I watched, paralyzed, as a trail of fire grew at a terrifying speed, thriving even under the relentless weight of the pouring rain.
The shadows vanished entirely, incinerated by the bright blaze of the flames. When I tried to look for my companion, I saw him hurriedly yanking his hood down further to mask his face. His lips were moving, but his words couldn’t penetrate the high, piercing whistle in my ears and the frantic, deafening pound of my heart.
The sharp crackle of burning wood reached me before his voice did. I turned my gaze back toward the coop, watching the wooden structure crumble without resistance. Blazing timber collapsed onto the fence, the fire spreading heedless of the storm.
And then, that thick, smoky scent began to fill the stable—a smell my nostrils knew too well.
It was as if my entire tragedy lived within those wild, uncontrolled flames. The pounding in my chest curdled into pure horror. My throat seized; my breathing began to falter as the ghosts of Skalitz rushed back to claim me.
A sudden hand clamped onto my arm, violently tearing me away from the sight. I followed the fingers up to a woman—one of the bathhouse maids, her face twisted in panic, still clad only in her thin nightgown. Her lips moved frantically, and on her third attempt, I finally managed to piece her words together through the ringing in my ears.
“Help us! Help us put out the fire!”
Perhaps it was the sheer desperation in her voice, or the way the reflection of the flames danced across her skin just like the fire in my nightmares. Whatever it was, something urged me to move. I sprang to my feet, hastily fastening my hose before running out into the downpour to fetch a bucket. An instinct buried in some forgotten, ever-present corner of my mind took over, completely overriding the sudden weakness in my legs and the total lack of air in my lungs.
Mostly women in white nightgowns moved like pale ghosts through the torrential rain. With buckets in hand, they hauled water from the river or from the big wooden vats by the tents, throwing it in desperate waves over the chicken coop and the blazing fence.
The next few minutes passed in a blurred, frantic whirlwind of curses shouted into the storm, dogs barking, the panicked squawking of a few surviving hens, and the chaotic rush of figures fighting the blaze.
I hurled one last bucket of water over the dying embers, panting like a man on the verge of drowning. A profound sense of relief washed over me as the final cinders hissed and went dark. Tossing the empty bucket aside, I leaned heavily against one of the stable beams, the crushing weight of the night finally settling deep into my shoulders.
Suddenly, the bright glare of a hand-lamp blinded me.
“Thanks, lad, for the help and all. But what on earth were you doing lurking in there?”
I shielded my eyes from the lantern light, looking down at my bare, mud-splattered chest and soaking feet.
“I was just…” Shit. “I was just hiding from the rain.”
I looked the woman in the eye. She was older than the other girls, her face lined with the sharp, no-nonsense grit of someone in charge.
A brief flicker of pity softened her hardened expression before she let out a sharp snort.
“We can’t have refugees or vagrants lurking about our girls! One comes sniffing around, and then ten more follow,” her voice rang out, clear and commanding even over the steady patter of the rain. My shoulders slumped instantly. “You helped here, so I won’t call the bailiff or the guards on you, lad. But grab your things and get out of here before someone less kind than me spots you.”
I nodded hurriedly and retraced my steps into the dark stable. With the faint glow of her lamp cutting in from behind me, I tried to locate my stuff.
The satchel was the easiest one, its fine leather gleaming against the wet straw on the floor. However, my shoes and my tunic were nowhere to be seen. Gone. And, of course, that bastard was gone too.
“Ah, that fucking arsehole,” I muttered.
The shirt he’d left behind was a useless, trampled ball of mud and hay that I wouldn’t deign to pick up with a dung-fork. Nearby, I found only one of his wet boots; the other was likely already floating its way down the river toward Ledetchko on the ride of its bloody life.
“Holy Jesus, Mary and Joseph, lad! Is that yours?” the woman called out, looking over my shoulder at the ruined scrap on the floor. “Didn’t your mum ever teach you how to take proper care of your clothes? Those don't grow on trees!”
I bit the inside of my cheek, pressing my canines against the open cut that bastard had left me with, tasting blood and doing my absolute fucking best to ignore her.
“Poor lass, whoever ends up marrying you. May Almighty God have mercy on her soul.”
I turned my head just in time to see her cross herself in pity.
“Sorry for… for the trouble,” I mumbled, scooping up the heavy silver and hurrying out into the night.
“And don’t you come back here without a groschen next time, lad!” the old woman’s voice drifted after me through the dark.
I walked back toward the mill, shirtless, barefoot, and freezing, my toes sinking into the thick, cold mud of the Rattay road. But as miserable as I was, my hand was clamped tightly around the leather satchel. It was still heavy. It was still real.